untitled
by Charity Angel
Summary: (because I suck at naming at the best of times, and this one is defying me) In which things between Jack and Ianto blow up. Set between "Living Afterwards" and "Making Amends" although, as ever, it would stand alone easily enough. [Cheating 5]


Ianto was difficult to get a read on. He kept everything bottled up, locked away beneath the armour plating of his omnipresent suit. He would be the consummate professional during the day, cleaning, filing, harmless flirting. Occasionally there was a less-than-innocent comment about stopwatches, but more often than not, Jack got something that was not quite a cold shoulder, but more a casual disregard of Jack's flirtatious comments. Jack wasn't pushing too hard, just trying to give Ianto as normal an environment as possible in order to recuperate. Flirting was a natural part of that environment, and he wasn't about to stop.

Since the night he and Ianto had talked about Canary Wharf and Rose, they had made love only the once, the night Suzie had died again, the night Ianto had teased him with a stopwatch. A few evenings later, after a day of being ruthlessly precise and stoic, Ianto had come up to the office after everyone else had left, ordered Jack to bend over the desk and, with the bare minimum of preparation, taken him roughly. There had been no consideration for Jack's comfort or enjoyment; Ianto had come with a grunt, pulled his loosened trousers closed and walked away without another word.

Baffled and more than a little angry, Jack yanked his own trousers and underwear back up and ran after Ianto, catching up to him in the car park.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, grabbing Ianto and pinning him to his car.

Ianto's expression didn't even flicker, although his body language radiated hurt and anger in equal measure.

"I'd have thought that was obvious. Or is it just all talk?"

Jack's eyes narrowed, and he trembled with the effort not to knee the little bastard in the balls.

"I'm not a sex toy," he growled. "If all you want to do is get off, you have two perfectly good hands. So, what the hell was that?"

Ianto shoved him backwards. Not expecting the move, Jack stumbled slightly but recovered well enough to deflect the punch that was thrown at him.

"You're a bastard," Ianto spat, pushing himself off the car and advancing. "You put a gun to my head and ordered me to execute my girlfriend, and now you expect me to play Happy Families with you?"

"What the…?" Jack threw a right hook at Ianto, who staggered back when it landed. "You come to me. I have _never_ asked anything of you, never 'expected' anything."

"Like hell." Ianto went again, surprising Jack this time and managing to land a glancing blow. "You've been hitting on me non-stop for weeks."

Jack stepped back, his expression incredulous. "I hit on everyone! Gwen, Tosh, hell, even Owen." He chuckled. "Although that's more for kicks, wind him up. Now, do you really want to do this, or are you going to tell me what this is really about?"

Ianto let out a bellow and rushed at Jack, tackling him to the floor.

.oOo.

"Jeff Rawlins blew his brains out yesterday," Ianto said bleakly, leaning against the bumper of his car, long legs sprawled out in front of him. He was prodding his left cheek experimentally, likely checking for any breakages. "I'm the last one."

"I know."

After Canary Wharf, Jack had set up funds and support for the twenty-seven survivors, but hadn't really taken the time to reach out to them. He hadn't wanted anything to do with One at all, his disagreements with Yvonne Hartman were well-known throughout the entire institute. Those left behind weren't his responsibility. Immediately in the aftermath of Lisa, however, Jack had actively sought them out. By that point, fifteen had already taken their own lives in one way or another, seven begged Jack for Retcon, which he happily supplied them with and set up cover stories and four were, as Ianto put had it, surviving: eking out an existence, but not really living. But one by one, over the last few weeks, they too had all succumbed. Only the twenty-seventh survivor, Ianto Jones, remained alive and with his memories intact. Jack had some idea of how that felt. But Jack had no option but to live with his memories of the wars, of Lahore, of the millennium. Ianto did.

"Do I need to keep you away from the firearms?"

Ianto snorted. It wasn't quite amusement. "Do you really think that would stop me? I've got plenty of kitchen knives at home."

Jack glanced over, the tiniest smile gracing his lips. "You wouldn't; it's too messy. You'd have a conniption fit over the state your flat would be in afterwards."

That actually did draw a dry chuckle from Ianto. "Owen's got plenty of drugs I could steal, then. And even if you stopped me going into Autopsy, I could still raid a few pharmacies on the way home. Or I could just drink myself into oblivion."

"That's harder than you'd think."

"Not with the vodka from the Polish shop on the corner. Shit, you've actually done that, haven't you?"

Jack marvelled once again at how calmly Ianto had taken the confirmation of Jack's immortality. Gwen generally pretended it didn't exist until the evidence was staring her in the face. Ianto just seemed to accept it, and actually thought about the consequences for Jack. Even when brooding about how much shit his own short life had thrown at him.

"Yeah, more than once. It's why I don't really drink any more. Bleeding out's not much fun, either, just so you know. Nor anything drug-induced: some of the early Torchwood operatives enjoyed using scopolamine a bit too much to try and get me to talk about how my immortality works, and they really didn't care about overdosing me."

"Fuck."

"I wish I knew, so I could have told them. A bullet to the brain is by far the easiest method, if you don't care about the mess afterwards."

There was a sideways glance from Ianto, prompting him to carry on. "It's quick and painless. Leaves one hell of a headache for a while, but at least it's quicker than bleeding out. Doesn't take all that long to recover from, either. It was seconds when Suzie shot me."

"How many times have you died, Jack?"

He shrugged. "I actually don't know any more; probably over a thousand. It was seventeen before I got picked up by Torchwood in 1899, and Alice and Emily, Alice particularly, took great pleasure in torturing me to death for information I didn't actually have. I stopped counting then. Hell, I'm not even sure how many times I went over the top during World War I. I try not to remember."

"I think you might be more fucked up than I am right now. You really don't know?"

"Really don't."

There was a mirthless laugh from Ianto's general direction. "And you all wonder how _I'm_ still sane?"

There was some rustling, then Ianto appeared in front of him, holding out his hand. Jack grabbed it and got to his feet. For the first time, Jack got a good look at the bruises starting to blossom across Ianto's cheekbone: no wonder he had been worried about it being broken!

"Let's get some ice for that," Jack offered. "You'll have to think of something to tell the others tomorrow."

Ianto gave him a weak smile, then winced. "I had been hoping to keep a shred of the truth, but…" He gestured to Jack's rapidly fading cuts and bruises. "I'm sure I'll think of something. I'm good at cover stories."

Jack slung his arm casually over Ianto's shoulder. "Yeah, you are. Come on. And you make sure you tell me if you get the urge to go into that Polish shop."

Ianto nodded, somewhat reluctantly. Jack chose not to comment. Ianto was damaged, but not that much, not really. He was a fighter and, with them, with Torchwood, he seemed to have found something to fight for.


End file.
